

Context:

> 今日は高校の時の友達とランチに行って、少し買い物をした後、ケーキを買って私の家で食べました。... **秋なので**
> 薔薇を飾ってモンブランを食べました。

The grammar book says that when "ので" is attached to a noun, you have to add
"な" to make it a "Ｎな+ので" construction.

May I ask why the "な" is needed here? Is it to change "秋" from a noun to an
adjective?


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meaning particle-な
What is the useage of "な" in "~なので"?


Copula form な developed as reduction of copula form なる during Late Middle
Japanese (not to be mistaken with 成{な}る and 鳴{な}る), which developed earlier as
contraction of にある (copula form に + existential verb ある).

This にある / なる / な could have been used with all types of
[nominals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_\(linguistics\)), i.e. nouns
and nominal adjectives (most of them in modern Japanese form a group often
called _na_ -adjectives). (Around 16th century な was used both attributively
and predicatively.)

In some usages, にある / なる was gradually replaced by である, and its contractions
ぢゃ (surviving in parts of western Japan and spelt じゃ since 1946) and だ.

**Somewhen during Modern Japanese, copula な generally stopped being used with
nouns, but this usage survived in NOUN + なの(だ|に|で|...) constructions.** Middle
の in these constructions is nominalizer (which according to some linguists
developed ultimately from case particle).

There is also copula form の (used only attributively). Synchronically more
regular construction in modern Japanese would be NOUN + のの(だ|に|で|...) (where
first の is copula and second の is nominalizer), but this seems rarely used.

See [here](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/26253/) for commentary about
であるのだ, なのである, であるのである.

**秋なの does not change 秋 from noun to adjective.**


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> May I ask why the "な" is needed here? Is it to change "秋" from a noun to an
> adjective?

Sort of, depending on what analytical theory you subscribe to and in
particular what "adjective" means in that theory.

The の of ので is a nominalizer - i.e., a pronoun that exists specifically for
the purpose of being described. This description is done in the usual way, by
putting some _attributive_ phrase in front. That could range anywhere from a
plain verb or i-adjective to much more complex constructions.

な is simply the attributive form of だ・です - in modern Japanese, ordinary verbs
that appear before a noun (in order to describe it) use the same form as they
would as the main verb of a sentence, but the copula doesn't. (In special
circumstances, である can also be used attributively.) So 秋だ "it is autumn"
becomes 秋な "which is autumn", used adjectivally.

Sort of. This is where it gets nuanced.

Generally, nouns can be used before terminal だ・です without a problem. However,
only certain nouns can normally appear before な. E-J dictionaries will
typically use the term "na-adjective", but this properly should mean the
_combination of_ the noun with な. (Actually, some words _only_ work this way
and don't fill all the normal roles of nouns. For example [綺麗]{きれい} doesn't
work before が, and needs to be adapted in order to talk about "prettiness"
abstractly.)

So, we might think of using the _other_ usual way to describe nouns: by
classifying/categorizing them (or marking possession [etc.
etc.](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/2770)) using a noun + の.
But then we run into another problem: we would have two のs in a row, serving
totally different purposes.

In practice, this isn't done - instead, な is used to connect to the の
nominalizer, even if the noun preceding な wouldn't normally fit there.

なので can be thought of as な+ので, but I think it is better understood as なの+で,
treating なの as a noun suffix meaning "-sort of thing". The combination なの,
with this effect, is also seen in some other contexts.


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First, do you understand what's being said in 秋なので?

The meaning is "because it's autumn".

If you parse the parts, 秋 is "autumn". ので is "because". The other answers seem
to dig deep into the derivation of ので or how な got to be what it is. That
isn't necessary to understand what's going on here.

Just as you don't say, "because autumn" as a complete phrase, you can't say
秋ので. It's ungrammatical. You need the copula for "it's" in there.

In plain form, this is だ. You could say, 秋だから. That would mean "because it's
autumn". But when you use ので, you need to change だ to な. The other answers dig
a bit into the why of this.


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